Happiness Is Getting A Table At Happy Crane

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Hand-pulled noodles with hedgehog and shiitake mushrooms at Happy Crane.
Hand-pulled noodles with hedgehog and shiitake mushrooms at Happy Crane.

After opening in August in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood, Happy Crane has garnered acclaim far and wide.

So, it’s no wonder that landing a reservation to enjoy Chef James Yeun Leong Parry’s contemporary take on Cantonese cuisine is as hard as getting invited to Taylor Swift’s upcoming nuptials.

A tip to the wise: Reservations open up 30 days in advance at noon on OpenTable. So, set yourself up with your phone, laptop or desktop five minutes before, and keep refreshing the page over and over again. When the reservations finally so pop up, immediately pounce.

That’s how I managed to secure a reservation for four a few weeks ago. And it was absolutely worth jumping through those hoops.

The dining room.
The dining room.

Like with Mister Jiu’s and Four Kings, both in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Happy Crane has reinvigorated Chinese food with fresh, young energy with the use of top-quality ingredients, time-honored and modern techniques, and playful reinterpretations.

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The No-Guilt Pleasure of Japanese Pudding

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A sweet taste of Japan.
A sweet taste of Japan.

Even after visiting twice in six months, there are still so many aspects about Japan that I sorely miss:

The speed and efficiency of its bullet trains.

The reverence for ancient cultural traditions.

The civility and orderliness.

And most of all, the pudding.

Whether we had just gorged on a dinner of sushi or ramen or even a fine kaiseki, my husband and I could not pass a 7-Eleven there at the end of the night without stopping in to grab a small container of pudding in the refrigerator case.

Think the smoothest, silkiest flan with a layer of dark, bittersweet caramel.

For all of $1.50 U.S.

Is it any wonder that one taste left us immediately hooked on this pudding that’s known as purin?

Yearning for it back home, I came across a particular intriguing version of it: “Soy Sauce Pudding (Shoyu Purin)”

It’s from the new cookbook, “The Japanese Pantry” (Smith Street Books), of which I received a review copy.

It’s by Emiko Davies, an Australian-Japanese food writer and veteran cookbook author, who runs a cooking school and natural wine bar, Marilu, with her sommelier husband in San Miniato, Tuscany.

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A Visit to Cafe Vivant — Where the Chickens Come Home to Roast

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The roasted Pescadero Red chicken at Cafe Vivant.
The roasted Pescadero Red chicken at Cafe Vivant.

When my husband told a friend at the gym that he was going to dinner at a restaurant where a whole chicken costs more than $100, the response was:

“What?!? Does it lay golden eggs?”

Not quite.

But Cafe Vivant, which opened in late October in downtown Menlo Park, is definitely not your average fast-casual rotisserie or fried chicken joint.

Instead, this unique upscale restaurant specializes in heritage-breed poultry. If you remember decades ago when heritage turkeys started to be all the rage, despite a price tag multiple times larger than your average Butterball, then you get the gist of how these chickens differ.

These breeds, which existed before chickens became an industrial commodity, take longer to raise, are harvested when they are older, and not surprisingly, are in much smaller supplies. The results are chickens raised more purely, with more pronounced flavor and texture.

The upscale restaurant opened in Menlo Park at the end of October.
The upscale restaurant opened in Menlo Park at the end of October.
The striking dining room.
The striking dining room.

The restaurant is owned by revered sommeliers Jason Jacobeit and Daniel Jung, who also run Somm Cellars in New York City, which specializes in rare and collectible wines. They have partnered with farmer Rob James of Corvus Farm in Pescadero, who raises a couple of the specialty breeds.

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Whipped Spam — Whip It Good

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Spam -- that you don't want to delete.
Spam — that you don’t want to delete.

It’s as guilty a pleasure as there ever was one.

Spam is both beloved and maligned. But as anyone who grew up like me with the canned lunch meat will attest, there’s just a comforting nostalgia that tugs whenever we spot the familiar blue and yellow can on a supermarket shelf.

It’s mandatory for Hawaiian musubi, handy for noodle stir-fries on the spur of the moment, and a right of passage with eggs of any sort in the morning.

Now, get ready to enjoy it in “Whipped Spam with Toast Points,” in which it takes on an airy, chopped liver or dip-like consistency when whipped with cream cheese and herbs.

This intriguing recipe is from “Padma’s All American: A Cookbook” (Alfred A. Knopf), of which I received a review copy.

It’s by Padma Lakshmi, the former host and executive producer of Bravo’s “Top Chef” for 19 years. The cookbook draws from her travels and experiences from her Hulu series, “Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi.” If you haven’t yet watched the two seasons, I highly recommend them not only for the salivating food that’s highlighted, but for the deep illuminating cultural insights.

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